Monday, June 27, 2011

You are what's being sold

"On the web, the rule is: if you're not paying, then you are what's being sold."

I came across that brilliant quotation last week and it leads me to ask how much people care?

We're so used to information and services on the Internet being "free" that we don't notice the personal information leakage and the tracking cookies that increasingly profile us to target adverts in our direction. Just try changing the settings in your browser to require confirmation before cookies land on your machine: no major website is usable without cookies - and many of them place several trackers there before you even get to see any content on the page. I tried confirming cookies recently, and gave up within half an hour in order to get some work done!

I'm betting that there's a minority sufficiently tired of all this that they're looking for an alternative. The question is, if they don't want information about them to be sold, will they be willing to pay? The lunch can't be free, so someone has to pay the costs of service provision!Get more like this